Letters from Baghdad

Grade Snapshot

Voiced and executive produced by Academy Award winning actor Tilda Swinton, Letters from Baghdad tells the extraordinary and dramatic story of British spy, explorer and political powerhouse Gertrude Bell, who was the most powerful woman in the British Empire in her day. Bell traveled widely in Arabia before being recruited by British military intelligence to help draw the borders of Iraq after WWI, establish the modern state of Iraq and reshape the modern Middle East in ways that still reverberate today. Among her accomplishments, she created the Iraq Museum to preserve the priceless cultural artifacts and antiquities of the region. This was the museum that was infamously ransacked during the American invasion in 2003. Many of the ancient sites that Gertrude Bell visited and photographed, such as Palmyra, Nineveh and Nimrud, have been destroyed by ISIL. She left over 7000 photographs, including stunning panoramas of these sites. Nicole Kidman portrays Gertrude Bell in Werner Herzog’s upcoming film Queen of the Desert.